The Obama administration accused Iranian government agents Tuesday of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States and immediately used the thwarted plot to ratchet up sanctions and recruit international allies to try to further isolate Tehran.

Two men, including a member of Iran’s special foreign actions unit known as the Quds Force, were charged in New York federal court with conspiring to kill the Saudi diplomat, Adel Al-Jubeir.

Justice Department officials say the men – Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, and Gholam Shakuri, who authorities said was a Quds Force member and is still at large in Iran – tried to hire a purported member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the assassination with a bomb attack while Al-Jubeir dined at his favorite restaurant.

…The U.S. criminal complaint said the Iranian plotters hired a would-be assassin in Mexico who was a paid informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and told U.S. authorities all about their plot, which they code-named “Chevrolet.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller said many lives could have been lost. But Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said no explosives were actually placed and no one was in any danger because of the informant’s cooperation with authorities.

…Asked whether the plot was blessed by the very top echelons of the Iranian government, Holder said the Justice Department was not making that accusation. But he said the conspiracy was conceived, sponsored and directed from Tehran. The U.S. describes the Quds Force as Iran’s primary foreign action arm for supporting terrorists and extremists around the world.

In and of itself, this plot was an act of war against Saudi Arabia AND much, much more importantly, against the United States. Keep in mind, the Iranians weren’t planning to poison, stab, or shoot the Saudi ambassador. They were planning to set off a bomb in an American restaurant that would have undoubtedly killed American citizens.

Had the plot come off, it would have been nothing less than a terrorist attack on American soil that was launched by a foreign government. Under those circumstances, even Obama would have been compelled to launch strikes at targets all across Iran — at a minimum. An attack like that would be complete justification for a full-on war against Iran that ends when the country is subjugated and its leaders are chanting “Death to America” in hell.

Many wars in world history have started over far less than a bombing of this sort and Iran’s leaders must be well aware of that fact. If they were willing to risk a war with the United States now, when they don’t have functional nuclear weapons, how much bolder would they be when they have nukes and thus, would be protected from attacks by conventional forces? We’re talking about a nation that not only cooperates with terrorists and hates America, we’re talking about a country that has now actually ATTEMPTED A TERRORIST ATTACK ON AMERICAN SOIL.

That’s not something that should be overlooked and the Obama Administration has a responsibility to tell us what they’re going to do about this Act of War against the United States.